In this age of political change, ideological surprises, aesthetic ruptures and the dictatorship of the immediate, ephemeral triumphs and vain glories, it is time to realize that the source of true successes, significant progress, useful lives, has always been the same, since time immemorial: transgression.
Indeed, we all lock ourselves, too often, inside invisible boundaries, that condition our lives, our notions of success and happiness. Boundaries that condemn any progress, success, anything new, to be only an appearance, a repetition of one and the same thing, with a few derisory variants.
These boundaries are rational when researchers are wrapped up in a closed scientific paradigm. They are aesthetical when they accept as a work of art only what does not abide by some standards. They are social when we are bound by the condition of attending, speaking, working, maintaining relations with people of the same origin and cultural background. The boundaries are political when they prohibit doing what the current common sense considers impossible.
Only when we dare break these rules, can we bring progress to society, knowledge, and art. Only when we break them, can we find who we truly are; because we are not defined by the prevailing norms, unless we resign ourselves to being the ‘clone’ of someone else, out of mental comfort, cowardice, or laziness.
Thus history moves forward: transgression means Abraham leaving his father’s house; it means Caesar crossing the Rubicon; it means Giordano Bruno denying the uniqueness of the solar system; it means Bonaparte leaving Egypt; It means Monet painting impressions; it means Einstein refusing to be content with the laws of electromagnetism; it means Schonberg refusing the laws of tonal music; it means Juan Gris defying the rules of figurative painting; it means James Joyce getting rid of the laws of novel writing; it means de Gaulle refusing France’s 1940 armistice; it means Gorbachev bringing perestroika. And so many others, as famous or lesser known, who have transgressed various scientific, artistic, political or social rules, to move the world forward. Thus of those who transgress social norms to advance democracy; or those who violate family norms, to make possible women’s freedom, non-arranged marriages, divorces, and same-sex unions.
Transgression therefore requires, first of all, to have the courage to say no to what is organized for oneself by others: to say no to the profession your parents have in mind for you; the academic orientation that school imposes on you; skills that you are expected to have; the family they would like you to have, the political conception they would like you to share, the place where they would like you to live. It means to refuse routines, habits, mores, models of success, models of life, as well as social, aesthetic, mental, religious norms.
Even if the apology for transgression is not the same as that of illegality, it makes it imperative to refuse what society wants to impose upon you, depart from amoral norms, for example, those which consider as normal dictatorship, the violation of human rights, slavery or child labor. Transgression is thus the contribution to the advancement of freedom and the refusal to admit that something is impossible.
Thus it is when we have succeeded in finding our true selves that we can best be useful to others.